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An appearance September 16th on the Rachel Maddow show by Frank Schaeffer (a former Evangelical Christian leader and now anti-fundamentalist Christian activist) explains the insanity of our current political climate in the following way:
1. Fundamentalist Christians are raised outside of rational thought to believe things like dinosaurs and humans cavorted on earth together... until God invented the rifle to kill the dinosaur... and the homosexual.
2. Armageddon is a good thing since the fundamentalist Christians will go to Heaven (and the rest of us will be, as their literary genre suggests, "Left Behind")
3. The anti-Christ will appear, get a wound (bullet hole?) in his head and then appear in his true form and the fun of end times can finnally begin.
Rachel Maddow: Why Do 1/3 of New Jersey Conservatives Think Obama Might Be the Anti-Christ? | Politics | AlterNet.
I want to believe these things. If we're really just dealing with a bunch of nutcases, then all we need to do is convince reasonable GOP leaders to stop mobilizing these people to win elections. A big task, I admit, but still, GOP leaders are motivated by "reasonable" things, like power and money, right? And ultimately, if big money in the form of corporate interests dries up for those GOP leaders who whip up the village idiots, then they'd stop.
Unfortunately, it's too easy a story. These crazy fundamentalist Christians with their fatwas on Obama and their belief in every paranoid parable from "Obama not born in US" to "Government Death Panels as part of Healthcare" are, quite honestly, not that stupid.
Case in point: Dinner with Sarah Palin
The charity "Ride to Recovery," which helps wounded US vets recover with cycling programs , auctioned off dinner with Sarah Palin over the weekend. Ken Morris, rich guy turned thriller writer and Joe McGuiness, a vocal critic of Palin, pushed the bids past $60,000 when they were mysteriously cut off because
Governor Palin reserves the right to refuse dinner with a winning bidder if, in her sole discretion, the winning bidder is not a suitable bidder based on her subjective standards of suitability, professionalism, background and other factors. In the event the high bidder is rejected for this reason, the high bidder's bid will be refunded, if paid, and the next highest bidder shall be notified, and thereafter, until a suitable match is determined.
But no worries since one of those GOP idiots kept the bidding up and won the dinner with the former governor.
According to AKMukraker's article in the Huffington Post,
Cathy Maples, the owner of a defense contracting company in Alabama, won the bid at $63,500. Ms. Maples's told the
AP that she's such a big fan of Sarah Palin's that she's traveled to Alaska twice before to meet her. Since the reason that Ms. Maples likes Sarah Palin so much is because "she's got a lot of morals," I have to assume Maple's one of those fundamentalist "idiots" who comprise the GOP and the Evangelical Christian movement.
Okay, call me an idiot, but the owner of a defense contracting company managed to whip up patriotic spirit for the militaristic likes of Sarah Palin, who will, no doubt, run for President and the press covered it start to finish? And Ms. Maples has an extra $65K sitting around and she's an idiot?
The problem with pretending that Evangelical Chrisitans are just a marginalized group of idiots, with no power and no money, is that it's just not true. Fundamentalist Christians who really do believe that God hates everyone who is different from them are roaming this country with huge amounts of money and power. They are like T-Rex: stupid, perhaps, but big, mean, and really powerful. The GOP cannot ignore them anymore than humans could have ignored T-Rex, if in fact we had inhabited the planet at the same time, which we didn't.
Which leads us to the real idiocy: the idea that politics can be run by money and not be a congress of idiots. Without real reform of how politicians get funded (by "idiots" like Cathy Maples with money made from our tax dollars being spent on her defense contracting company rather than "smart" people like us who don't have an extra $60,000 to influence people), this country will continue to descend into the true idiocy of christian fundamentalism married to corporate interests represented by the likes of Palin.
The real truth is, we have on our hands a theocracy of fascism that is so heavily armed and moneyed that we might as well burn the village down and start over.